D&D 4E 4E Halflings unrecognizable from Tolkien hobbits

[coyote6]

I'm happy halflings will be taller. 3 ft. tall was too short. Heck, I don't think the LotR (movie version) halflings were three feet high:

And cultural traits (are they adventuresome, etc.) can be changed at a the GM/player/whoever's whim. I personally have no great love for Tolkien's stay-at-home English-ruralist hobbits (they aren't, IMO, really a great fit with the rest of D&D's swords-and-sorcery tendencies), so I'm fine with them not being the default.

 

[EATherrian]

I personally love the Tolkeinized hobbit and will continue to have a place for them in all of my game-worlds. The new halflings I'm not too sure of, as I already have a group that serves the same role, but if I need to add them I could. I don't get the hobbit-hate, as a player of LOTRO, I can tell you there are quite a few hobbit adventurers.

 

[Scarbonac]

Hobbits, yo. Accept no substitutes.

 

[perchy]

Best arguement i've seen so far

And it's something that's only common to halflings. But it's ALSO something that's noted in the description of the halfling head study on page 42: Halfling hair coils naturally.

It should be noted that for some reason all DnD hair is strait, in many cases long and strait, thats cos it's easy to draw, and thats what shows up in adverts.

Lots of people have curly (or wavy) hair, most of my family (and me if i didn't keep it damned short) can attest to this. But drawing curly hair is actually pretty hard, and drawing hair is faces is (for some reason) a no-no, so pulled back curly hair will just tend to look like dread locks. Also we can go back to the sexy D&D art issue, and how society (and hair adverts) love long strait hair, making curly hair odd.

Finally, dreadlocks is a cutural thing, but it is impossible to put black people into D&D without being racist (hense why we invent races and get to be racist to them).

P.S. dwarfs are the most tolkien styled race (they even use natural light to light their tunnels now, just like tolkien dwarfs)

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I'll note that this change is the biggest objection my wife has to the new edition. She hates both 3e and 4e halflings with a doughty passion.

Since she loves the plump, homebody hobbits of earlier editions, shouldn't that be a doughy passion?

Tolkien's high elves were those that visited the Shining Lands, a realm to the West beyond the mortal realm. His wood elves were those who remained in the mortal lands and never saw the sea.

Heaven isn't Faerie. I mean, draw a long bow if you must, but it's not the same as magical elves who live in a fairy land alongside the mortal world.

I, personally, was thinking of the distinctions between the various kinds of elves actually living in Middle-Earth.

Well, as for Tolkien rip-offs, I think you could say that about a lot of things in D&D - dwarves, elves, orcs, treants, magic rings etc. etc. So changing halflings solely for the sake of getting away from Tolkien does not make sense.

Unlike dwarves and elves, hobbits are pretty much entirely original to Tolkien. Plus, it's not just about whether or not it was in Tolkien first, but whether it's been in anything other than Tolkien since - and elves and dwarves feature in approximately nine billion times as many fantasy stories as hobbit-like little people of any description. Most "little folk" are, again, faeries, not patronisingly idealised bucolic types.

Tolkien orcs have never existed in Dungeons & Dragons, but as it happens I favour getting away from Tolkien even further when it comes to orcs as well. I'd be disappointed if orcs in Fourth Edition are corrupted elves or humans.

Ents, well, how much imagination does it take to come up with an intelligent tree? Would have happened sooner or later.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

I'm glad WotC is moving away from hobbits and to something more their own. IMO, they just need to drop the name halfling and replace it with kender (but don't keep the obnoxious kender stuff).

 

[Dragonhelm]

I'm mixed on this issue. I absolutely love Tolkienesque halflings. I also dig Lidda, and the adventurous halflings of 3e. I don't think I'll make the new 4e halfling my standard. There's certainly a place for them in my world, and a cool place. If a player wants to run one, I'm fine with that. But I also want a place for the traditional, pastoral halfling of previous editions.

Hmm. Can you imagine a turf war between the two? The new halflings selling their less worldly brothers into slavery, or fighting over a section of city? Interesting plot there.

For the longest while I didn't care for the 3e halfling because it was such a ripoff of kender and the old hobbit style halflings were gone. I mean, I love kender, so why would I want to play a "bad ripoff" of the real thing?

Recently, I had a brainstorm which solved all of my issues. This goes right along with what Piratecat is saying. Rather than have just one halfling race, why not have a variety of subraces that can have an interesting dynamic between them?

So I could still have my hobbit-style halflings with the hairfeet. Then rather than bemoaning the "unoriginality" of 3e halflings, I'd simply take them for what they are - "kender lite" - and play them that way as lightfoot halflings. The 4e halfling then becomes the Tallfellow, which works with his height. The polar version are furchins (aka frostlings). I haven't totally figured out the Stout halfling yet.

I kept going with the idea of rounded homes, so I got the idea of having not only hobbit holes for hairfeet, but also igloos with round doors for frostlings, riverboats with rounded domes and round portholes and doors for Tallfellows, and lightfoot halflings would live in Free Spirit Spheres.

So bam, I've got a whole variety of halfling subraces that keep the traditional stuff yet heads into new directions. There's all sorts of nifty interactions that can go on here.

Just remember, the PHB halfling is the baseline that WotC wants to support. The ultimate power of the universe, though, is the DM. Make halflings your own, and go with the version that works for you. And sometimes, the answer when deciding between X and Y is "both."

 

[Cam Banks]

Am I wrong to think that they all look like little cousins of Bo Derek in 10?

Does that make me old?

Okay. Um, right.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Piratecat]

IMO, they just need to drop the name halfling and replace it with kender (but don't keep the obnoxious kender stuff).

I don't have a lot of kneejerk reactions or emotional triggers. I like to think of myself as an openminded, easy-going guy. But if they replaced the name halfling with kender, I have absolutely no doubt that I would refuse to play the game.

I don't claim it's reasonable or understandable; it's just a name, right? But it's true. That's my line in the sand.

 

[Zamkaizer]

My mental conception of Halflings has been informed by a few key pieces of art - most recently this one:

While they're not the stout Hobbits of old, they're also not the tiny dreadlocked humans Dungeons & Dragons has occasionally embraced. I like this depiction of them - their child-like proportions allows one to tell they're small, despite the lack of reference, yet their adult features allow one to distinguish them from children. I'll probably rely on illustrations like these to depict halflings in my campaigns, rather than the official art we've seen so far.

Also, what happened to riding dogs? It's not a big deal, but I was fond of them...